Make It To The Moon
by za
Summary: Satine's death wasn't immediate; rather, it was slow and left room for grief.


Title: Make It To The Moon 

Author: mao

Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge! characters, likenesses, and original storylines belong to Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce, and everyone else on that fantastic project. The lyrics and title come from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song "Scar Tissue". 

Author's Notes: I'm a bad mao, I know. I keep meaning to finish my birthday!fic for Pearl, but it refuses to be written, so this is what came out instead. Shit. Oh well. It's sort of canon and sort of not. You can make your own mind up about it.

Warnings: Occasionally unfavorable portrayl of Satine, lesbian undertones, death, illness.

***

**Autumn's sweet we call it fall**

**I'll make it to the moon if I have to crawl and**

**With the birds I'll share**

**Just like you 'cause you made me**

**All that I am - All in a hand**

Granted, she didn't die immediately. She wasted away, bit by bit, growing thinner by the day, whiter every night as though leeching the color from the moon. Her skin was thin like knickers that had been washed too many times, and every time I looked at her it made me want to cry. She'd been awful at the end, gallivanting about with that damned writer, tossing the rest of our lives out the window just because hers' was trickling by - but it would be rude to get into that. God forbid I be honest about someone once they've died. No, it's all hearts and flowers now. She could do no wrong and all that rot.

He, of course, got to be devastated. Tickets were sold out for the next several weeks, so I ended up performing her role in the coming weeks. Every night when I got offstage and removed the kohl from my eyes, I'd go and visit her. At first it was to gloat - you got what you wanted, but so did I and all that. But she was smaller every time I saw her, and though she'd try to hide those crumpled hankerchiefs, I saw the red stains on them, fresh blooming petals of blood on the crisp white linen. Maybe that was what broke me, or maybe it was the delicacy of her paper-white skin. Perhaps there was something in the wetness of his eyes every time I left, in the way he'd watch me descend the stairs, clearly wondering why I was there, what I thought it would solve. Or maybe it was the way she became relaxed, beautiful in her new, quiet life. 

She sat in bed all the time, in that tiny garrett as he wrote penny dreadfuls that no real writer would ever want their name on. It was a pitiful attempt to pay the bills, to keep them both fed. The show ended and we began another one - strangely enough, a theater was more successful than the dancehall had ever been, and most of us were still whoring on the side - and she would ask me about it when I came by for my daily visits. I began coming in the afternoons, sitting by the window with her and watching the autumn fade away with the leaves fading from brilliant gold to brown.

They both vanished a bit more everyday. She was going physically, a little shimmer to her red hair, a little glow in her skin, paler all the time. With him it was more subtle - his entire naive personality began to fade, disappearing into the chill outside like the summer's breeze. 

And as he sliced his personality away - inch by inch - with the clicking of the typewriter, hers' became more concrete, took on a life of its own. Before she'd seemed unreachable, this untouchable singing, dancing goddess with autumn hair and skin like cream, her eyes glittering with diamonds. As we sat by the window, she began telling cautious jokes, making me laugh with her nervous humor and the effort she made to make me giggle. 

Me! Nini Legs-in-the-Air, the dancer without even a proper surname or grasp on her age, and she was trying to make me laugh, to see my face light up. And as the season passed - all too quickly - I began to wish the pink that had been in her cheeks before would return. I left money with her, and though I know they argued over using it, it went to her tonics and medicines. Soon I was out, spending days on my back, and early mornings after performances pressed against the bricks in an alley. 

The coins all went into a small pouch, and that went to the apothecary, and the tonics and cocktails went to her thin hand and into her fading body. Every time I saw her, she sparkled more from within, even as her famous eyes lost their opalescent glint. She would giggle over something I'd said - laughing so hard it turned to coughing and hacking, concerning me with the vehemence with which she spat globs of blood into her ladylike hankerchiefs. The lace edges would come away shimmering with the thickness of fresh blood, and she would tuck them away, into a discreetly overflowing bucket.

Every time she did that, he would shoot me a less discreet look, with a clear intent. From his expression, I could gauge that he didn't appreciate my visits, that he didn't like the way I made her laugh. He cornered me one afternoon on my way upstairs, just outside the boarding house. He took me by the elbow, pushed me into the alley, his grip gentle but clearly controlling. 

"She needs to conserve her strength," he told me, his voice soft and carefully modulated; he was angry. "She's not going to get better if you're always in there making her laugh and thrash about. She needs her strength to get better." Strongest case of denial I'd ever heard. I pushed my hat back into place - the force of him pushing me had tipped it a bit - and approached the topic as gently as I knew how.

"What good's that strength going to do her when she's dead?" I kept my voice low and looked him in the face, though he refused to meet my eyes. "Christian, she's dying. She might as well enjoy herself, mightn't she?"

"She's going to get better," he interrupted me. I could see panic forming thin lines around his eyes and tears massing at the bottom lids. "She- she's going to get better, and we're going to leave here, and...she's getting better," he finished off lamely, letting the words dangle like clean washing out to dry. I took hold of his shoulders, bent my face so he had to look me in the eyes, and spoke slowly.

"She's going. Just be good to her - that's all she has now." And, eyes damp, he nodded. 

He never sat in the room during our visits again. Every day when I showed up, he'd go out to the market and buy their supper, or for a walk down by the Seine. Perhaps he considered jumping in, or perhaps he bought time with a little whore - I'll never know what he did during those hours, how he relieved the stress of watching his lover die. All I know is that when he came back, he'd give her a kiss on the cheek and ask her how the visit went - my cue to leave, to wander the streets and wonder why I felt a growing pit of jealousy every time his lips met her ever-paler cheek.

She, of course, was oblivious, and I doubt he noticed the green twinge I felt every time he kissed her. There was something in the satin sheen of her cheek, in the gentle curve of the edge of her dressing gown, hiding her famous body that begged to be held one last time. I would find myself thinking of her at night, wondering how much thinner she'd gotten, if the smooth skin of her back still held the same iridescent sheen it had had under the lights, or if that had been powder to make her skin as white as it was now.

As glittering as she'd been then, up on her swing, untouchable by the rest of us, she was now, but in a completely different way. Her personality was in evidence now, without that incredible drive forcing her higher, to earn more, to be better than the rest of us. Now she was content with her lot - a man who loved her and a woman who brought her flowers and tonics and the occasional girlish giggle. It wasn't much by anyone's standards, but it was all that mattered to her now. The diamonds, all the money she'd once made, all the honors showered over her - they were forgotten as she laughed and pulled the blankets tighter about her weak frame, shutting out the ever harsher wind.

One afternoon I moved to close the window and she stopped me, one skeletal hand closed over my wrist, more a symbolic gesture than an actual attempt to stop me. 

"Don't," she murmered. "I'm cold, but soon it won't matter."

It was the only time she ever acknowledged to me that she knew she was dying. Other than that it was laughter and me combing and fixing her hair, a sisterly sort of devotion that grew more sordid and tragic by the day. 

"You can't fall for her," I'd tell my reflection in the mirror. "Just don't even go there. It's perverse, and strange, and besides - she's dying. Not worth the heartache." 

I knew what was happening, I was just powerless to stop it. There was something in her smile that spurred me on, that made me want to please her and make her enjoy her last few days, weeks, months - whatever she had, it was priceless, and I wouldn't keep her from being carefree.

The last conversation she and I ever had revolved around her rapid rise to noteriety. 

"All I ever wanted was to be famous," she told me as she gazed out the window to the branches whipping in the wind. The leaves were nearly gone, and those that were left fluttered helplessly in the grasp of the inevitable.

"I wanted to be famous, and then when that happened, I wanted more. I wanted to be special as well, and I wanted to do this and that." Her hands were folded in her lap, and I took one, feeling its fragility through my prim kid gloves. "It got so I just wanted everything, and now I know I'll never have it. I won't have the children and the grand house, I won't have-" and then she broke off, tears a million times more glittering than her skin tracing their ways down her cheeks. "I wanted it all - I wanted the moon. I wanted the damn moon and I was going to get it if it killed me. And it may have." And then she dropped her head, the tears dropping into her lap, thicker now, like rain on my glove. I leaned in, cradled her head to me, held her like a mother as she sobbed out all her terror and regrets. "I don't want to die, Nini. I want to feel. I want to feel forever - that's all I want now. Is that silly?"

She looked up at me with those big sad eyes and for one moment she was as gorgeous as she'd always been, up above me, costumes glittering with thousands of sewn-on gems. She was as engaging as she'd become in the last few months, when she'd developed her sense of reflection and self-criticism. I kissed her, my lips sliding over hers, my tongue finding its way into her mouth, combating her own, a lot of strange feelings welling up from deep inside me - 

And then I pulled back and she smiled coyly, looking away. 

"It's been a long time since anyone's done that to me," she murmered, and we spent the rest of my visit in silence. When he came back, I hopped up, darted out of the room without more than a "Goodbye!" over my shoulder and a slight blush. I couldn't meet his eyes. 

The next day she went into a trance, one that she would never wake from. A week later she lay dead, under six feet of freezing earth. I held him at the funeral, while the sun beat down incongruously bright, its heat making us all feel the pain even more unbearably. He sobbed into my shoulder, tears of rage and loss and anger, and I felt something inside me drop out.

I looked up and there was a pair of doves on a bare branch nearby, cooing sweetly to each other. During the eulogy, I watched them quietly, even as Zidler said some polite words about her and the priest pretended she hadn't been a whore. And then, as we began dropping dirt on the casket (what is it like, being in there, cold to the core and unable to know you're such), one dove flew off, silhouetted across the sky, leaving the other to wonder.


End file.
